Quantic Dream shows off PS4 tech demo The Dark Sorcerer

Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls developer Quantic Dream has shared the full 12-minute version of its PlayStation 4 tech demo The Dark Sorcerer: A Next Gen Comedy, following a short tease during Sony's pre-E3 conference on Monday. It's an impressive and surprisingly funny short film about actors recording a scene for a video game, all running in real-time on a PS4.

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Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls developer Quantic Dream has shared the full 12-minute version of its PlayStation 4 tech demo The Dark Sorcerer: A Next Gen Comedy, following a short tease during Sony's pre-E3 conference on Monday. It's an impressive and surprisingly funny short film about actors recording a scene for a video game, all running in real-time on a PS4.

"We wanted to gain a little distance from our tendency to take ourselves seriously and believe that we are saying something original or important, whereas the stories and universes of many video games are no more than the echoes of things that have been done better a thousand times before us," director David Cage said in a PlayStation Blog post. He also dropped some tech:

In the current demo, there are about a million polygons in the set, and a little less than a million per character on the screen (i.e. a total of 4 million when the three characters are on the screen). Each character has about 350 MB of textures and about forty different shaders. It’s all managed with Physically Based Shaders, volumetric lights, full HDR, Color Grading, Physical Lenses (particularly useful for chromatic aberrations and 3D depth of field), and translucence for more realistic rendering of the skin. The change of set and all the lighting (and the behavior of the shaders) between the dramatic version of the set and the "studio" version is done in real time. The same holds true for all pyrotechnical particle effects.

As Quantic Dream is still working on the engine, Cage says this demo "is only a first test that is well below the visual quality we hope to achieve in our next game." Which won't be a full video game of The Dark Sorcerer. Its current game, Beyond, is due October 8 on PS3.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    June 12, 2013 7:22 AM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Quantic Dreams shows off PS4 tech demo The Dark Sorcerer.

    Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls developer Quantic Dream has shared the full 12-minute version of its PlayStation 4 tech demo The Dark Sorcerer: A Next Gen Comedy, following a short tease during Sony's pre-E3 conference on Monday. It's an impressive and surprisingly funny short film about actors recording a scene for a video game, all running in real-time on a PS4.

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      June 12, 2013 9:35 AM

      "Cage says this demo "is only a first test that is well below the visual quality we hope to achieve in our next game."

      If they can actually accomplish improving visual quality further than whats seen here it will be very impressive, especially if they can get it to run at a consistent frame rate. Each character using 350mb of textures just goes to show the long term benefits the PS4 gets from going with 8gb of gddr5. I cant wait to see what games look like in 2-3 years.

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        June 12, 2013 9:44 AM

        Just look at the visual gap between PS3 launch titles and recent/upcoming games like The Last of Us. In 5-7 years PS4 games are going to stretch that gap even farther thanks to the clever future-proofing built into the memory architecture.

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      June 12, 2013 10:10 AM

      This is what I expected from next gen. The most lifelike computer imagery I've seen in games yet. I'm happy there is someone out there pushing the bounds of visual fidelity.

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      June 12, 2013 10:49 AM

      Yeah, I've been fapping to this nonstop.

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      June 12, 2013 10:50 AM

      Haha, this was awesome. I hope they keep making new "episodes".

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      June 12, 2013 11:02 AM

      Dat facial animation! His skin wrinkles have the subtlest wobble around his skull. Impressive!

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      June 12, 2013 11:27 AM

      meh why show tech demos when your competitors can do the same thing? there is no differentiation from xbox one graphics and that of PS4 and actually xbox one will have cloud computing which will give it an extra advantage. next gears of war, bioshock, halo, assasins creed, red dead, gta will look as good as this tech. If wrinkles and realistic skin floats your boat i guess you can gauk at this demo but for real gamers, we want great looking games that play great and this demo does nothing to prove PS has an advantage on this premis.

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        June 12, 2013 11:43 AM

        cloud computing, the blast processing of the internet era

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        June 12, 2013 12:45 PM

        cute

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        June 12, 2013 1:01 PM

        If the Xbox One can do this even better then you, dear finalSpart4n, should be delighted that the next generation of games you play could look this pretty and moreso.

      • reply
        June 12, 2013 1:03 PM

        this has to be a character account right

      • reply
        June 12, 2013 1:05 PM

        teehee I'm so glad you're back, I was worried that you'd left.

      • reply
        June 12, 2013 1:05 PM

        I love this account.

      • reply
        June 12, 2013 1:41 PM

        GAUK! GAUK! ITS DE SOUND O DE POOOHLEEEEEEEEEEEEEESE!!! GAUK!!!!! GAUK!!! ITS DE SOUND O DE BEAST!!!!!

        • reply
          June 12, 2013 7:23 PM

          Big ups, but Whoop don't sound like Gawk. "What flavor is the caulk? When you put it in your mouth, what does the caulk taste like?"

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        June 12, 2013 2:09 PM

        microsoft cloud is such a joke compared to sony's gaikai which literally injects teraflops into the CPU to provide you with the best pixels possible

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          June 12, 2013 3:41 PM

          On a more serious note, doesn't Sony having GaiKai, essentially mean they have the closest thing to backwards compatibility (though I bet you will have to repurchase the games) that we are going to get this gen?

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            June 12, 2013 3:58 PM

            Yeah Gaikai is the streaming tech they acquired for $380M a while ago. They announced it's coming to the US first sometime in 2014 and will initially include a selection of the most critically acclaimed PS3 games, with more details to follow at a later date.

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        June 12, 2013 2:52 PM

        Haha... Check this guy out.

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        June 12, 2013 2:59 PM

        Yes much like the ps3 offloaded rendering tasks to the SPU's, as will the xbox one offload triangle culling and screenspace reflections to the cloud.

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          June 13, 2013 6:03 AM

          Have you heard about latency?
          If any game required gfx calculation done in the cloud it would add internet latency to your gameplay, Imagine that with a single player game on a slow connection, that wouldn't be a very pleasant experience to have huge lag in solo game.

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        June 12, 2013 3:25 PM

        what's the ETA on this guy being banned?

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        June 12, 2013 3:32 PM

        hahaha there you are!

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        June 12, 2013 3:48 PM

        to prove PS has an advantage on this penis -- or am I the only one who read that?

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        June 12, 2013 3:51 PM

        and actually xbox one will have cloud computing which will give it an extra advantage

        You're either deliciously ignorant of what that means or a master troll. Either way great work sir!

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        June 12, 2013 4:10 PM

        i love that you are here

      • reply
        June 12, 2013 4:13 PM

        i love that you're here!

      • reply
        June 12, 2013 4:15 PM

        Did someone tell you that if Sony sells more consoles Master Chief will die?

      • reply
        June 12, 2013 4:19 PM

        I really think this is somebody's character account.

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        June 12, 2013 8:23 PM

        This isn't madness.

        This is Spart4!!!!1!!!1!!!0ne!!1!!!

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